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Cops and animal control officers worked together to successfully relocate a deer that wandered into a Whitby neighbourhood and took a dip in a pool Tuesday morning.

Durham Regional Police were dispatched to Fallingbrook St., near Taunton Rd. E. and Garden St., around 8 a.m. to deal with the latest incident involving a large animal wandering into a residential neighbourhood.

“Initially, I could get close enough to tell it was a healthy deer,” Const. Jamie Bramma said. “Sometimes you can see it and can tell it’s been hit by a car or sometimes they’ve run through glass windows because they’ll see their reflection and run at it. It was pretty calm. We just basically held our ground and had it contained to the backyard.”

There was concern the deer would run onto nearby Taunton Rd., which was congested with rush-hour traffic. A plan was devised to tranquilize the deer and relocate her to the woods, police said.

However, the plan didn’t exactly go off without a hitch.

As Bramma and other officers slowly entered the backyard, the deer got scared and jumped a fence, landing in the neighbour’s pool. Animal Control Services showed up within about 15 minutes.

“It actually ended up working in our favour with the deer landing in the pool and couldn’t get out, so we were able to contain it even tighter there,” Bramma said. “(Animal Control) was able to shoot the deer with the (tranquilizer dart) while she was in the pool and once she started losing her mojo a little bit, we were able to pull it out of the pool.”

The deer was then driven north and released in the woods.

“It actually got a nice bath on a warm summer day,” said Bramma, a 19-year officer at the service. “We figure the deer came from a population of deer just south of where the 407 is being built. There’s no ill effects. It’s a happy ending.”

A few hours later and 45 minutes to the north, another large animal, a black bear, was hit by a car as it wandered out of the wilderness to cross a street.

The OPP say the bear was struck around 10:45 a.m. on Elm Tree Rd. near Valencia Rd., in the town of Valencia, which is just south of Lindsay.

The bear walked back into the woods and was gone by the time officers arrived on scene.

The incidents come in the wake of a black bear being shot in Newmarket Monday.

York Regional Police officers located the bear Monday morning and cornered it up a tree. They waited nearly two hours for the Ministry of Natural Resources to come to the scene and relocate the large animal.

Just minutes before ministry workers arrived, the bear began to climb down the tree and officers were forced to fatally shoot the bear because of the threat to public safety.

“All these supposed experts were saying it wasn’t a danger, but let’s be honest, it’s a powerful dangerous animal,” Bramma said. “Just imagine if the bear got out and mauled some poor kid or attacked people watching. We just can’t stand by and watch that happen and take that chance. It’s apples and oranges with a deer, because it doesn’t pose the same danger that a bear does.”